2023-12-17 18:43:07
On December 17, the outstanding Soviet and Georgian film director Otar Ioseliani died in France. On February 2 he would have turned 90 years old. “Once Upon a Time There Lived a Song Thrush”, “Falling Leaves”, “Favorites of the Moon”, “Truth in Wine”, “Chantrapa”… There are only 21 films that he shot in Georgia and France, where he moved back in the 1980s. Whenever someone asked where he lived, Otar answered with surprise: “In Georgia, of course. I’m a Tbilisi guy.”
He shot each of his films as if it were his last. This was his principle. Ioseliani has said more than once that it doesn’t happen that today you shoot some rubbish, and tomorrow you will do something worthwhile. He shot his last film, “Winter Song,” in 2015.
It was entered into competition at the 68th International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. That year, Marlen Khutsiev was honored there, and her retrospective was held. And next door, another classic of Soviet and Uzbek cinema, Ali Khamraev, was visiting his daughter. They haven’t seen each other for many years. Having learned that Ioseliani was in Locarno, Khamraev wanted to invite him to pilaf, but no one knew his mobile phone number. Attempts to find Ioseliani and get his contacts from the festival services did not yield any results. I had to sign up for an interview, which ultimately did not take place. But there was a friendly dinner in the hotel restaurant where Ioseliani, who had arrived for only three days, lived. It is a pity that it was impossible to record those conversations. Ioseliani did not want to be photographed, but later asked to send him photographs. After the feast, we bought a bottle of wine that he liked and left it with the receptionist with a humorous note.
Still from the film “Winter Song”.
In the creation of what turned out to be Ioseliani’s last film, “Winter Song” (Georgia-France), two Georgian ministries took part – culture and defense. The latter provided the film crew with infantrymen and military equipment. The tanks were loaded with toilets and all sorts of rubbish that had been snatched by looters who raped old women and gave their jewelry to their lovers. This was the image of one of the modern wars, some kind of Caucasian one, without specification. The soldiers died as if on stage, performing a monstrous dance. The action was reminiscent of a giant puppet theater in which adults began to play, forgetting that they would not have one life or another. The wars have no end, and the prosperous French indifferently watch what is happening on TV with a glass of good wine. Parisian housewives cut fish using tiny guillotines. Ioseliani appears in “Winter Song” for a minute to sniff the contents of an elderly lady’s chamber pot with a calm face. The world is collapsing, but its heroes do not lose their love of life, and this is their salvation.
All his life Ioseliani filmed about the “favorites of the moon” and “stepsons of fate”, slackers and indifferences, shantraps and drunks living on the streets of Paris or Tbilisi. I had to interview him more than once in different cities and countries, and every time Otar spoke about how important it is to appreciate the moment, because at any moment everything can end.
A native of Tbilisi, he studied in Moscow. But I didn’t become a director right away. If you believe his stories, then everything happened by coincidence. “I tried to become a pianist, play the violin, but during my exercises my uncle came up to me and asked: “So will you read other people’s texts all your life?” Otar recalled. “I didn’t make Richter, so I decided to take up mathematics, entered Moscow State University, and received a scholarship that was three times higher than the usual one. One day a military commission came to visit us. When I realized that they wanted to turn me into a person working for the military-industrial complex, I decided to run away. I didn’t want to make bombs. There was no way out, so I went to the cinema.”
Still from the film “Once Upon a Time There Lived a Song Thrush.”
He entered the workshop of Alexander Dovzhenko at VGIK, but the master died of a heart attack a year later. “The filmmakers were dying of hopelessness,” said Ioseliani. — After Dovzhenko’s death, our course was left without a leader. That’s how we graduated from college. There was not a single scoundrel among us.”
Ioseliani returned to Georgia to “mount other people’s paintings, make candy out of them,” went to work at a metallurgical plant, after which he filmed “Cast Iron,” which was banned. Both “Falling Leaves” and his great film “Once Upon a Song Thrush” were banned. “In Soviet times there was an interesting phenomenon: the more you were in disgrace with the government, the more respect you enjoyed. After I filmed Pastoral, I was told that I would not work again. I didn’t work for eight years, and when Eduard Shevardnadze came to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, he let me go to France to film, risking my neck. If I had run away, it would have been bad for him. In France I filmed “Favorites of the Moon,” and when I returned, perestroika began. But the state stopped giving money for cinema. It became impossible to film, and I went to France again,” this is how he described his life.
The director’s only tool, according to Ioseliani, is conscience. He often disturbed the “anthill”, spoke sharply about officials, swindlers of all stripes, whom he found in any instance, in any jury. But this did not cancel the love for life. Here is the formula of his life and the greatness of his cinema: “When you are young and cheerful, you perceive life differently, and it does not matter where you are. There would be time to live. Greet your friends, get joy from the fact that they live in the world. Look closely at people. It’s important that the guy next to you is a decent person with an unblemished reputation, so that he doesn’t turn out to be a fool or a money maker.”
Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29180 dated December 18, 2023
Newspaper headline: Favorite of the moon and shantrapy
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